He's not a Player but a Playa. The hair. The diamond stud in his ear. The outlandish comments: "I love basketball - I don't really like the sport of tennis that much." That's gold, baby. Twenty-four-carat gold. There's your back page, Mr Sports Editor.

Oh, and then there's his game. The power. The audacity. The shot between the legs against Rafa in the quarters at Wimbledon just a year ago. The serve. That serve. He's not just a story tree. It's like he's serving from one.

Nick Kyrgios. Kicks! Love him.

As a fan, though, I'm not so enamoured. "I go out there and I like to entertain," he says. "I like to put on a bit of a show." The show is starting to wear a little thin, Kicks.

I'm starting to feel like Nick Kyrgios is - and there's no delicate way of putting this - a bit of a tool.

I can handle the smashed racquets. But he crosses the line when the tantrums are directed at others: the ugly abuse of umpires, the ball boys who don't bring him his towel quick enough, the crowd who have paid good money to watch him play.

We also want a dollop of humility in there somewhere. Just a bit.

That between-the-legs shot against Nadal summed up the bane and beauty of Kyrgios. Some players would've raised an apologetic hand to their opponent on the other side of the net, acknowledging they'd got away with it. That there had been an element of luck. Federer would. Kyrgios raised his arms out like he was the messiah. Look at me. Look at me. Look at me.

Kyrgios opens his Wimbledon campaign on Monday night (AEST) against Argentine baseliner Diego Schwartzman in the first round, a week after splitting from coach Todd Larkham and with zero form from the French Open and Queen's tournament because of illness and injury.

Regardless of the result, or how deep he goes into this tournament, Kyrgios will remain Australia's great white hope. Our next great white hope.

It should've been Bernard Tomic. On talent alone, it still could be. But after Tomic again sided with his divisive father and coach John - who is, unsurprisingly, at loggerheads with Tennis Australia over funding - and withdrew from the Davis Cup quarter-final against Kazakhstan, it's clear where his allegiances rest.

What is needed with Kyrgios is patience. He is merely 20 years old and yet to break out of the bubble of family and friends who have told him from the time he could hold a racquet that he was special. Any criticism is already viewed as an attack, in much the same manner Team Hewitt or Team Tomic considered any syllable of negative press as something sinister.

But there are reasons for this dynamic, and we should be mindful of it. The Kyrgios journey has only just begun.

Australian tennis has been starved of so much success, for so long, that when a brash teenager arrives and starts taking down the likes of Federer and Nadal and others, we grab hold and hope for the best.

There's a growing belief on tour that the Kyrgios arrogance is a front, masking the pressure of expectation he's feeling. In many respect, he's at the first crossroad of his career: does he want to be like Pat Rafter or Hewitt, who squeezed out every drop of talent through hard work and unrelenting ethic? Or win big, dazzle us, captivate us, and then flame out like Mark Philippoussis?

There's also the Rafter Effect.

Rafter and Kyrgios once stood back to back in Bonds undies for a photoshoot, but they could not be any different. Notwithstanding the generations of Australian men's players who were - seemingly - nothing but gentlemen, Rafter set an unrealistic bar in terms of what we want from our next tennis champion: the boy-next-door who belonged on the front of a cereal box who said, "Sorry mate" whenever he stuffed up a ball toss.

Australia has a new version of Rafter. His name is Thanasi Kokkinakis, who is already being touted as a "role model" even though he's just 19. "That's our Australian tennis pin-up boy right there," says Rafter. No. No pressure at all. The comment was as much a smackdown of Kyrgios as a warm acknowledgement of Kokkinakis.

Kyrgios is the antithesis of Rafter. At the Australian Open, his matches were cage fights as he whipped the crowd into a frenzy with his bullfighter antics as much as his play. He told a spectator to "Get off the f..king phone!" between points, when maybe a quiet word to the umpire would've been enough.

His now-infamous interview last week with The Telegraph in London shows how much he can divide opinion.

"I got pushed by my parents and to this day I can still say I don't love the sport," he said. On one hand, it was brutal honesty; a refreshing change from the cliched drivel we hear from most sportspeople. On the other, it was an astonishingly disrespectful admission three days out from the game's oldest and most prestigious tournament. 

Shake the tree, words fall out, begging to be written.

Don't ever change, Kicks. Always be a playa, if that's what you want to be. But just remember there will always something or someone else to write about, long after the show is over.